Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Baltimore's Ponytail is for the restraint-repulsed soul, the impulse reveler. They specialize in the seemingly random sound outburst, but not as occasional surprises as gimmicks or hooks. The little guitar and drum explosion is their modus operandi and their raison d'être. All songs are sustained multiple orgasms of sound. And then there's lead singer Molly Siegel, yelping and wailing and begging for another like a pony in heat, or an alien, her vocal cords clearly controlled by the instrumentation, feeding off it like a radio control signal. It all comes off as ferocity barely leashed, often on the edge of escape, midair at the end of the chain and drooling. If Michael Bay made profound indie rock, it wouldn't be this awesome.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

I've saved countless in-studio performances this year, and posted the ones I like the best. This one beats them all. This arresting acoustic version of A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene inspires me to go out and buy a Martin D15, yesterday. And all of these, when listened to at the right moment, will make you tremble - Will Sheff's voice has a deep soulful sadness that connects instantly.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

If you love Georgie James as much as I do, you'll love two things: an in-studio performance at Rainydawg Radio (Seattle), available for download here. Second, a live show this Saturday night at UMBC's Quadmania, featuring a carnival and live music all day. Georgie James is up at 8:30, and Dan Deacon plays at 5:50.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The Calico Horse used to be Clock Work Army, whom we said very nice things about a few years ago. Loved singer Emily Neveu then, and love her now. Father Feed Me (mp3), a carnivalesque rock tune, is tagged as a Clock Work Army song, but it's not really, and it doesn't matter, anyway. It's a damn good song, with a warped oom-pah-pah piano intro and dark guitar fuzz, and real pretty piano flourishes at the end. I'll be looking for their debut, Mirror, out May 27th. Also check these out: Awake In The Clouds (mp3)(these clouds seem to be the black variety, not white), and Onomatopoeia (mp3), which in some ways feels a little like a Walkmen song, with soaring vocals and the title word drawn out in syllables, vocal hesitation cleverly creating emphasis.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

I just wanted to say...I was there. Before I left, I told myself that I wouldn't post a proper review of the show. So I arrived without a camera, without recording equipment, and without a worry about remembering setlists, banter, etc. - in other words, I left the critic's eye and ear at home. Liberated, I lived in the moment with the rest of the fans in the mixed-age sold-out venue. It was like taking a night trip to Canada to see a dream rock combo.

Here's what I took with me:

Okkervil River - the opening medley of The President's Dead and Black, two of my favorite Okkervil songs, and from the start, Will Sheff was ON. Also, the blissfully noisy parts of Our Life Is Not A Movie, and the collective shiver I imagined we all felt in the solemn A Girl In Port.

The New Pornographers - It was A.C. Newman's birthday, and we attempted to sing the Birthday Song in unison, but it didn't come out that way. The gift was to us - The Electric Version, From Blown Speakers, and The Laws Have Changed, and All For Spinning You Around enthralled, My Rights Versus Yours, All The Old Showstoppers,Twin Cinema and Use It were also crowd-movers, but the euphoric height of their set was The Bleeding Heart Show, stunning even without Neko Case, who was sick.

Are you ready to go in? The Wet Secrets steer your dinghy directly into their Rock Fantasy, which trembles with throbbing pulses of noise, cries and echoes of desire, hooks that search for your skin, and at its heart, a dark enchanting chasm that devours your flesh whole as you laugh at its whimsical irony.

He also spoke at length with Mary Lucia about working with the BBC on a documentary about his father, who developed the theory of parallel universes. Here are some bits from the interview:

MC: Was there a lot of things that were absolutely new to you that you found out through doing this process?E: Just about everything. I really knew very little about him.

E: Well, people probably have no idea what we're talking about here. We're talking about the guy who invented the concept of parallel universes. And I did not inherit the math gene from him at all. I can't even add up the tip after dinner without a calculator.

E: I blame Einstein for ruining my childhood.MC: Right on. How so?E: Well, he didn't take my father seriously. My father withdrew, and he was like a piece of furniture in the house to me. That's all I knew.

MC: [about her relationship with her own father] I think people feel like, again, well he's your father, you should know him, and you should know where you come from, but when you don't necessarily have that much in common with someone...E: Yeah. It's hard to have anything in common with a guy who's a genius quantum mechanic...and I think that was his biggest problem in life, that it was extremely hard to relate to the regular chimps around him.

MC: How did you meet Tom Waits? How did that ever initially come up?E: There's this thing called the Shortlist Music Prize, and he was a judge on it a few years ago, and he nominated our album, Shootenanny, and that was the first time I had any idea that he was paying attention...the thing that's great about meeting Tom Waits is that he really is Tom Waits. There's no mistaking the entire time you're in his presence who he is. He's exactly who you would expect.MC: Which, again, exactly what you would expect I'm not entirely sure...E: Just awesomely Tom Waitsian.

MC: You met Neil Young?E: Yes.MC: Did you want to?E: Of course, yeah. I met him and I got really nervous and the first thing I said to him was "I like your beard."